The first announcement from Steve was a sad one: our friend “Mad Mick” Beattie has lost his long battle with cancer and passed away last week. Our condolences to his family and friends.
Onto happier things: the current club standings have had a switch around after a flurry of plaice catches – see the Standings Listing below.
Fish Of The Month had a number of entries but the hot contenders were Andy Bird’s mullet of 5lb 4oz and Steve Tamblin’s huge stingray of 43lb. The stingray was 143.4% of the specimen weight and wins Steve a medal and £10 – an impressive catch.
We couldn’t bring news of the SMAC Open Species Competition because it was postponed from last Sunday and will carry forward each successive Sunday until we have fishable weather. Dan has a hot tip for small species identification: take a clear plastic container and photograph the fish in water. Fins are a good indicator of species and they are much easier to see when swimming.
The Cod Pool is now officially open so please pay Steve £10 before you catch a cod to be in with a chance of taking all the pool money.
The date for the SMAC Cod Open Competition will be Sunday 30th November. Put that date in your diaries and clear every Sunday afterwards until about the end of January. The only year we actually fished the Cod Open on the original date was the year I couldn’t be there, which I am still sore about. It’s a great event.
The Inter-Club Competition was won last year by Langstone Harbour Fishermen’s Association so they are hosting this year’s event. So far we only have a suspicion of a date based on rumour so we are seeking clarification, to put it politely.
The next meeting will be on Tuesday 7th October at 7pm in the Marina Bar.
We were almost outnumbered by SMDAC this time – we followed their meeting where they welcomed the new Chairman Ben Munday and planned the next few months’ activities.
Anyway, Steve’s back from Norway and soon called us to order. The current competition standings were announced, which are detailed below. So far we have 14 specimen fish entered for Angling Trust certificates, which shows we have some very good anglers in the club.
A number of those specimens have appeared in the Fish Of The Month entries, and this time we had a close tie between Ray Plomer’s 2lb 6oz Gilthead Bream and Andy Bird’s 4lb 12oz Mullet. The Gilthead won by a whisker (or whatever they have).
We then reviewed the first SMAC Open Bass Competition which was very well supported. The full report is here. You can also listen to an independent podcast from DNA Fishing covering the Bass competition here (it’s a long podcast so you can fast-forward to 127 minutes to hear our bit)
Our next competition is the SMAC Open Species Competition on 31st August. Same rules as before: photographic entries for most species with a tie-break species scoring system. Cards and claim forms will be issued on registration. Further details and on-line booking if required is here . Our competition advertising banners will be updated and made available to sponsors.
A monthly Catch Report is published on this website. If you would like photos and mentions in the August or future reports please send them in – email, SMAC WhatsApp or message is fine.
Next meeting will be Tuesday 2nd September 7pm in the Marina Bar.
Our popular summer Open Species Competition will be held on Sunday 31st August, with a reserve dates of the following Sundays if weather conditions are against us. Fishing will take place between 8am and 4pm, with all claims to be submitted by 5pm. There will be presentations of prizes (lots!) in the Marina Bar or terrace from 6pm.
First prize will be 60% of entry fees, Second prize 20% of entry fees and a Ladies Bonus Prize of 10%. There will also be a Junior bonus prize and many other prizes from our regular sponsors.
Entry fee will be £10 per angler, payable in cash on the day at Southsea Marina or using our online link for boats not starting from Southsea Marina. All claims must be made in person at Southsea Marina by 5pm.
Rules: Maximum two rods per angler, maximum three hooks in total. All fish must be photographed with your entry card visible, and photographs must be available to substantiate all claims. A list of qualifying species will be provided. In the event of a tie, a species score tie-break will be used.
On Saturday 12th July, an idea from Dave Newnham and Dan Lumsden finally became reality: the first SMAC Open Bass Competition. Not content with just that, they introduced several new (to us) features: it was to be Catch & Release, entries based on fish length; it would have a shotgun start and we would also pre-sell entries the evening before. Most significant of all, Chairman Steve Kelly was taking a well-deserved break so it was to be organised and managed by Dave and Dan, plus Neville Merritt. They say you should never make several changes at once but we are brave souls and ignored that.
After much investigative work by Dave and Dan we found a reliable supply of standard fish measures, we had prizes from our loyal sponsors and we also had a very welcome last-minute sponsorship from Rapala VMC. The rules were similar to other SMAC competitions but with one significant difference. Fish length on the SMAC measures was to be verified by a short video to be checked by the SMAC organisers. This proved to be very successful and meant fish could be returned quickly if required. In total 39 competitors and 16 boats took part.
The day dawned gloriously sunny and calm to start with, although a breeze picked up later in the day. After all registrations were complete and fish measures hired out together with a pack of free lures from Rapala, the boats gathered at the Roway wreck marker at 7:30am for a shotgun start. This was quite dramatic, because you don’t often experience 16 fast angling boats all heading to their marks together! (See videos below).
Competitors made the most of the time available, returning to Southsea Marina to register their claims by 6pm. After each claim form was checked against the video, we were able to rank the winners. At 6:30pm the Marina Bar Garden was full of anglers and friends all waiting for the results. Prize sponsors included Andy’s Baits ; British Big Game Fishing ; Cosham Angling; Fishon Bait N Tackle ; Victory Plumbing and Heating ; Southsea Marina Bar; Newnham Builders; Prestige Builders; Mark Oldfield Heating Plumbing and Gas Services and Rapala VMC .
Local Rapala Agent Mark Wright was also taking part in the competition so we invited him to award the prizes. There were no Ladies registered so we had the main prizes plus Junior prizes to hand out. These were won as follows:
1st: Steve Tambling, 70cm (£445 cash, rod and reel from Rapala)
2nd: Jim Atkins, 68cm (£222 cash plus rod from Rapala)
3rd: Matt Budd, 67cm (Andy’s Baits voucher plus rod from British Big Game)
4th Fergus Morrison (Junior), 66cm (Fishon Voucher plus Junior bonus of a rod from Mark Oldfield and reel from Newnham Builders)
5th equal: Richard Pack and David Miller, 65.5cm (Cosham Angling voucher and tackle voucher from Victory Heating)
7th equal: Dan Lumsden and Peter Atkinson, 64cm (each tackle packs from Rapala and British Big Game Fishing)
9th: Sam Cofie, 63.5cm (Meal for two from the Marina Bar)
10th: Ken Farmer, 60 cm (Bottle of Gin from Newnham Builders)
11th equal: Eddie Walsh and Dennis Fuller, 58cm (Bottle of Gin from Prestige Builders and Cooler from Rapala)
Junior 2nd place: Luca Bogza, 56cm (Reel from Newnham Builders)
Congratulations to all the prize winners, and many thanks to all the competitors who supported the event. We are very grateful to all our sponsors and to Premier Marinas for their continuing support of the club. Finally, thanks again to Dave Newnham and Dan Lumsden for all the hard work involved in creating a new angling competition for SMAC.
Despite the stifling heat we had enough members present to give our guest Vicki Neild, Programme Manager with Seakeepers International Society a warm welcome. The meeting started with an introduction to the Society and its aims, then Vicki explained four different projects that any of us can get involved in. Links provided take you to the relevant Citizen Scientist pages.
Seabed 2030: to collect depth and location data from participating vessels to help complete the mapping of the world’s oceans by 2030. All that is required is a data logger (supplied) to be attached to your boat’s data network.
Orca Oceanwatchers: to report sightings of any whales, dolphins and porpoises. Training and an app is provided.
Humpback Whale Sightings: working with the University of Exeter to record sightings of humpback whales in UK and Irish waters.
Eyesea: reporting any form of pollution including oil, chemicals, plastic waste to help build a global picture of what is really happening in our seas.
Vicki concluded with a link to the Green Guide to Boating which we can download and gives tips on protecting the environment while we enjoy boating.
If you would like to be involved in any of these projects please contact Vicki at vicky@seakeepers.org
After that very interesting presentation, we returned to our regular agenda. Steve went through the current club competition standings, see below. Then it was Fish Of The Month! We had a number of good entries and nobody challenged the unofficial rule of Best Specimen, so FOTM was awarded to Andy Bird for a mullet of 4lb 8oz.
The Annual SMAC BBQ attracted 32 members, and the raffle raised £785.00. After costs were deducted we were able to add £52.48 to club funds. Neville was thanked for cooking and also putting out a small BBQ fire, and Team Atkins were thanked for the delicious pile of scones. You can read more and see photos on the linked page.
Our next event is the Bass Open Competition on 12th (or 13th) July. Posters and banners are up, prizes are being collected and fish measures have been delivered. Dave Newnham explained the rules and answered any remaining questions. Details are on our Competition page with a link to the sign-up form unless you want to pay cash on the day.
The date will be set for our annual Open Species Competition in August after the Bass Competition is completed.
Our next monthly meeting will be on Tuesday 5th August at 7pm in the Marina Bar as usual.
This is our annual summer event, free for members and families, where we get together on the Southsea Marina BBQ Deck and have food, banter and a fundraising raffle. We were fortunate again this year with glorious weather and just enough breeze to keep boat anglers ashore.
We aim to keep the annual subscription low, and supplement funds with raffles at our main member socials – the Summer BBQ and the Presentation Night after the end of the season.
Running a club BBQ on this scale is a real team effort and we had lots of support. We are very grateful to Dan and Steve who ran around organising prizes, BBQ and ordering supplies; fab scones from Eleanor and Jim, raffle ticket sales by Eleanor, Steve and Pam organising the remote ticket sales for members who couldn’t make it, John C for help setting up the gazebo and clearing up, Frank as Fire Safety Officer, Eleanor for Food Hygiene Inspector, Tim for making the site tidy and all those who donated prizes. And finally, huge thanks to all the members and families that turned up and made it a fun event, and those who couldn’t attend but bought raffle tickets anyway. I was just cook!
We had a good attendance last night even though some of our members were away enjoying themselves fishing in Florida and Norway. Steve Kelly chaired the meeting as usual, opening with a run-through of the Standings. All change here as you can see below, and this early in our calendar we can expect a lot more challengers too.
Our Fish Of The Month award turned into Southsea Marina’s version of Conclave, with a good number of bream entered in the 2lb+ mark plus a decent gurnard and bass too. However, after much debate white smoke emerged and FOTM was awarded to Ray Plomer for a 5lb mullet, at 125% of the Specimen size.
The SMAC Bream Open Competition was very successful attracting 54 competitors. It was won with a 3lb fish and Jim Atkins the Best Placed SMAC Member in Second.
The new SMAC Open Bass Competition has overcome the hiccup over the supply of fish measures so it remains a Catch & Release competition, to be held on 12th July (13th July reserve date) 2025. The Club will fund the purchase of fish measures which will be supplied one per competitor’s boat for a returnable deposit of £15. Claims must be supported with a short WhatsApp video of the fish measurement. Many thanks to Stuart Newall of British Big Game Fishing for sourcing these for us.
Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 1st July at 7pm in the Marina Bar. We will open with a short talk from Gill Rodrigues and Vicki Neild of the International Seakeepers Society about Citizen Science marine research projects we can help with.
After several postponements due to the weather, we finally held our first Open Competition of the year from Southsea Marina. The weather was glorious and 30 boats with 54 competitors went out on Sunday to search for the biggest Black Bream.
The fishing was generally very good with plenty of catches. The general opinion was that it was easier to catch a lot of bream than to catch a very large one! Although we were targeting bream, a variety of other species were caught alongside them which at least made interesting sport while waiting for the big one.
The wind picked up a little in the afternoon and boats started coming back in early which spread the load on Steve Kelly and the weighing-in. There was plenty of speculation because there were eight prizes plus Ladies and Junior prizes so fractions of an ounce suddenly became very important. In the end we had an uncontested overall winner, although many of the other places were only separated by the tiniest amount. Prize-giving took place in the Marina Bar garden (garden? Well, it has a fence) and prizes were handed out by last year’s winner Mark Oldfield. Results are as follows:
1st – Dave Schofield with the only 3lb bream 2nd – Jim Atkins 3rd – Peter Churchill 4th – Jim Taw 5th – Ryan Whitmore 6th – Dan Lumsden 7th – Neil Glazier 8th – Eddie Walsh
Ladies Prize – Eleanor Atkins
Junior Prize – Luca Bozga
We would like to thank all our competition sponsors who donated prizes, Steve Kelly for a lot of organising and all the competitors who made it a great day for us all.
Cash prizes were awarded for First and Second place. Other prizes were donated by: Premier Marinas, Southsea Marina Bar, Bait’R’Us, SMDAC, Brian van Daal, British Big Game Fishing, Mark Oldfield Plumbing, Victory Gas & Heating, Fish-on Bait and Tackle and Cosham Angling.
The meeting started with a quick catch-up of prizes won but not collected including Specimen Certificates for Sam Cofie (pictured), then we were onto the Club Standings. That was a very short agenda item because nothing much has happened except Pete Churchill has Best Specimen with a spurdog of 14lb 8oz, and he also leads the Species Hunt with 9. That’s it, everything else on the table is blank. Roll on Spring!
Fish of the Month was a little more entertaining because we had Pete’s spurdog plus another from Peter Atkinson, except he had measured his at 109cm instead of weighing it. Google AI estimated 77lb and if we are trusting our future to AI it looks like we are all doomed. Anyway, it turned out that Peter’s mystery-weight fish wasn’t caught on a club boat anyway and was disqualified leaving FOTM to Pete Churchill.
Our club membership stands at 71 paid members, 2 lifetime members and 6 junior members. SMAC represents 47 boats berthed in Southsea Marina, which is a significant percentage. Club funds are healthy, enough to pay for our summer BBQ (free to members and family) and our end of season Presentation Night in 2026. Save the date for the BBQ – it will be on Saturday 28th June in the Marina BBQ area as usual.
The Sea Angling Classic Meet & Fish event will be hosted by Premier at Southsea Marina on Saturday 26th April. This year it will be a charity fundraising event for Sea Spirit and sponsored by Crewsaver who will be donating some good prizes. Entry £15 per angler, minimum 2 and maximum 4 per boat. You need to pre-book your entry here
Our next competition is the Bream Open on Sunday 4th May, details here
Our new Open Bass Competition is scheduled for 5th July, details will be confirmed nearer the date.
Next meeting will be Tuesday 6th May at 7pm in the Marina Bar
Our Presentation Night is one of the social highlights of our calendar when we can celebrate all the successes of the previous season and have a few drinks and fun as well. As usual, this year we combined the SMAC Awards with our friends from SMDAC and packed the room at the Marina Bar. Steve Kelly had once again done a huge amount of work organising the cups, engraving, prizes, venue and food. On top of that he compered the evening with his usual efficiency and humour making it a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
The running order of the night was the SMDAC Awards, then the SMAC Awards and finally after some food to sustain our energy levels, the raffle. Before we got on to the main business we had to catch up with a Fish Of The Month award for Ray Plomer from November. Next item was to hand out all the Angling Trust Specimen Certificates and Medals which covered 13 specimen fish caught by members last season.
The club awards were presented by our good friend Rupert Bremer who has supported SMAC at Premier Marinas since its inception. SMDAC cups and awards cover beach, boat and lake fishing and were presented as follows.
Mixed Freshwater Lake Cup – Frank Chatfield
Largest Freshwater Fish – Tony Tadd (Mirror carp, 13lb)
Silver Fish Species Cup – Frank Chatfield
Combined Beach and Pier Competition – John Wearn
George Dominy Trophy – John Wearn
Best Specimen – John Wearn
Cod Cup – John Calton
Species Hunt – Frank Chatfield
Runner Up Champion – Tony Tadd
Club Champion – Frank Chatfield
The SMAC awards were then presented by Rupert Bremer as follows:
Plaice Cup – Dave Newnham (1lb 15oz)
Bream Cup – Dan Lumsden (3lb 1oz)
Bass Cup – Steve Tambling (8lb 10oz)
Cod Cup – Darren Price (7lb 10oz)
Pollack Cup – Mark Banks (16lb 5oz)
Best Specimen Turbot or Brill – Dan Lumsden (Brill, 2lb 9oz)
Turbot or Brill Runner Up – Richard Pack
Ladies Cup – Soulla Banks
Junior Cup – Jack Dickson
Catch & Release Cup – Jock Park (Thornback 15lb)
Best Specimen – Peter Churchill (Gilthead 3lb 6oz)
Species Hunt Cup – Peter Churchill (39)
Ladies Species Hunt – Pam Eckersall (23)
Junior Species Hunt – Jack Dickson (6)
Nelson Mandela Cup – John Wearn
Bream Open, best placed member – Dan Lumsden (2nd)
Inter Club Competition – Ray Plomer
Cod Open, best placed member – Neville Merritt (3rd)
Cod Pool, First – Darren Price (7lb 10oz)
Cod Pool, Second – Neville Merritt (4lb 3oz)
Bill Arnold Memorial Trophy – Neville Merritt
Pairs Cup – Steve Tamblin & Dan Lumsden
Club Champion Runner Up – Steve Tamblin
Club Champion – Dave Newnham
The Bill Arnold Memorial is awarded in memory of our now departed but very dear friend Bill, to the SMAC member who has made a significant contribution to the running of the club during the year. Unfortunately Bill’s sister Mary was unable to present this in person but we hope to welcome her again in future years.
After pizza and chips we moved on to the raffle. We have one free raffle for members and then a fundraising raffle. In addition to prizes bought by SMAC we were also very grateful for prizes donated by SMDAC and Premier Marinas. The raffle raised £760 towards the cost of the evening, so many thanks to all that contributed.
Congratulations to all the competition, award and prize winners! We have lots to look forward to in the coming year including a new Open Bass Competition plus our regular fixtures of competitions and annual BBQ. All we need now is some warmer weather.
